Everyday Food

What to have for dinner. The biggest dilemma in America on a daily basis. Unless you happen to live in the white house and have a personal chef--this is a daily ritual that we can all relate too.

Why is it so difficult? If you have children I can imagine it is tough to be creative every day. But even beyond that-there is something within us that screams for something colorful, tasty, filling and exciting. Then we open the fridge and see pickle relish, mustard and milk. Yeah-not exactly the makings of Haute cuisine in there.

I keep a few things on hand that allow me to make something good a lot of the time. I'm not going to lie and say every night is like a french bistro--but I do usually have something tasty and healthy most every night. Even if that is french bread and good cheese.

So I took a picture of my salads tonight. One was for dinner and the other was for Lunch the next day on the train. Far superior to train food!

I always keep really good pitted olives, hard boiled eggs, pickled onions, pickled sweet peppers, cheese, lettuce on hand. For these salads I also had some steak and chicken pieces that I had taken home from my friend Janis's Kentucky derby party. The salads were very yummy. Oh I had some fresh pineapple so I added a little of that chopped up as well.

The salad dressing in the background is from trader Joe's. I make my own for company-but just for me I use this stuff which is low cal and you fat and VERY tasty.

It took about ten minutes to make both salads.

So many things can go into a salad. In a couple of weeks I am going to have one of the Diva ladies over who eats salad every day -0but has been eating the same salad for about a year. We are going to have a lesson on salad variety. both the type of lettuce and the things you use in it. And then maybe even the dressings.

Last week we had dinner for my friend Paula's birthday. We made a fabulous salad with all the things I mentioned above plus some thinly sliced fennel. It was just delicious. We had that with some of my homemade sweet onion dressing.

On the menu that night was the salad as well as these really tasty mussels we made with a tomato cilantro hot pepper sauce and some nice crusty french bread--toasted with garlic scraped across the top. A couple of fresh artichokes with a nice dipping sauce and Viola! a fabulous meal.

Of course I forgot to take pictures of that-but it was colorful and inviting--trust me.

OK-Paris next!